Me 5 years after buying a 3D printer: been working on CAD'ing that one project for well over a year with probably about as much time left before it's ready for its first prototype.
(And that doesn't include all the time I was distracted with other projects, many of which were not 3D-printing related at all.)
I'll dust my printer off when it's time for that first prototype.
I've never used a Reddit client in my life (aside from the web interface, and that I didn't even use on a phone, just on a keyboard/mouse interface). But when they fucked over app users, I quit out of solidarity.
Though how far Reddit had its head up it's own ass with regard to blockchain/NFT bullshit was a significant contributing factor as well.
And Reddit killing its API also happened not long after WotC tried to fuck over D&D players with their OGL1.1 bullshit. The community response is what got WotC to back down on that, and I was drunk enough on that victory to believe that quitting Reddit would do something positive. (Mind you, WotC didn't learn their lesson. They sent the Pinkertons after one of their own innocent customers because... well because they're WotC, apparently.)
I pretty much went from using Reddit daily but grumbling about them to quitting Reddit and signing up for Lemmy over the course of less than a day. My "journey" was extremely quick.
The one community I probably miss most is /r/bestoflegaladvice. Lemmy just doesn't have the amount of engagement to make that a possibility here. There used to be a /c/bestoflegaladvice somewhere, but it was literally just reposts from Reddit. And engaging with that seemed incongruent with the aims of my Reddit boycott.
I heard someone on NPR say that liberals misunderstand conservatives more than conservatives misunderstand liberals. Not sure who said it. Someone on a program I started in the middle of.
Also, "3 of the following (1 each)" is a weird way to say "one of each of the following."
That's not really less likely to happen if I choose 25 years old than if I choose 10107 years old, right? the genie said "forever", which I assumed meant immortality. And there was nothing in OP's post that made it sound optional to become immortal.
In Eisenstein's estimation, the solution is a transition to a gift economy. And the process starts with:
Negative-interest currencies
Elimination of Economic Rents, and Compensation for Depletion of the Commons.
Internalization of Social and Environmental Costs
Economic and Monetary Localization
The Social Dividend
Economic Degrowth
Gift Culture and P2P Economics
(That list is from the section titles of Chapter 17 which kindof serves as a "summary" of the rest of the book. He lists very specific policies in service to all of these points.)
Most of these are things that would require legislation to make happen, but Eisenstein is optimistic. Or at least was in 2011 when he wrote the book. (Not his only book, but I haven't read any others by him. I probably should, however.)
Charles Eisenstin's book "Sacred Economics" (which you can read here and that I recommend reading in full) has a nice, simple parable in chapter 6 about that.
Once upon a time, in a small village in the Outback, people used barter for all their transactions. On every market day, people walked around with chickens, eggs, hams, and breads, and engaged in prolonged negotiations among themselves to exchange what they needed. At key periods of the year, like harvests or whenever someone's barn needed big repairs after a storm, people recalled the tradition of helping each other out that they had brought from the old country. They knew that if they had a problem someday, others would aid them in return.
One market day, a stranger with shiny black shoes and an elegant white hat came by and observed the whole process with a sardonic smile. When he saw one farmer running around to corral the six chickens he wanted to exchange for a big ham, he could not refrain from laughing. "Poor people," he said, "so primitive." The farmer's wife overheard him and challenged the stranger, "Do you think you can do a better job handling chickens?" "Chickens, no," responded the stranger, "But there is a much better way to eliminate all that hassle." "Oh yes, how so?" asked the woman. "See that tree there?" the stranger replied. "Well, I will go wait there for one of you to bring me one large cowhide. Then have every family visit me. I'll explain the better way."
And so it happened. He took the cowhide, and cut perfect leather rounds in it, and put an elaborate and graceful little stamp on each round. Then he gave to each family 10 rounds, and explained that each represented the value of one chicken. "Now you can trade and bargain with the rounds instead of the unwieldy chickens," he explained. It made sense. Everybody was impressed with the man with the shiny shoes and inspiring hat.
"Oh, by the way," he added after every family had received their 10 rounds, "in a year's time, I will come back and sit under that same tree. I want you to each bring me back 11 rounds. That 11th round is a token of appreciation for the technological improvement I just made possible in your lives." "But where will the 11th round come from?" asked the farmer with the six chickens. "You'll see," said the man with a reassuring smile.
Assuming that the population and its annual production remain exactly the same during that next year, what do you think had to happen? Remember, that 11th round was never created. Therefore, bottom line, one of each 11 families will have to lose all its rounds, even if everybody managed their affairs well, in order to provide the 11th round to 10 others.
So when a storm threatened the crop of one of the families, people became less generous with their time to help bring it in before disaster struck. While it was much more convenient to exchange the rounds instead of the chickens on market days, the new game also had the unintended side effect of actively discouraging the spontaneous cooperation that was traditional in the village. Instead, the new money game was generating a systemic undertow of competition among all the participants.
The development of currency results in loans. The practice of loaning starts the practice of charging interest. Interest requires constant growth.
Individual companies have to grow to keep up with the necessary constant growth of the economy as a whole. Any company that doesn't keep up dies.
It's a catchy one. Too bad it's so homophobic.